Foreign Students in the UK Face New Requirements

According to a July 30th report in Reuters UK, foreign students coming to the UK will be required to provide documentation that they are sponsored by a licensed institution and provide financial evidence that they can support themselves and their families. Additionally, the new rules require foreign students planning to study in the UK to supply their finger prints. These new rules were implemented by the Home Office in an effort to control the increased abuse of the system by non-students and colleges.

Voice of America article on Increase of Americans Studying in the Arab World

I recently came across a July 24th article entitled “More Americans Studying Abroad in the Arab World” by the Voice of America and I think many readers will find it of interest. Also available is a voiced report by Bob Sivak. The article highlights the new study abroad programs that are in development by AMIDEAST.

Advancing America’s Priorities Act

Yesterday (July 28th) the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the Advancing America’s Priorities Act which included the bill for the Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act by a vote of 52-40 (60 votes were needed to invoke cloture). You can read more at insidehighered.com here:
http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2008/07/29/omnibus

Simon Bill Included in Advancing America’s Priorities Act (S. 3297)

On June 24th the American Council on Education sent a letter to the Senate to encourage support for the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act of 2007. The Simon bill was included with 35 other bills into what is being called the “Coburn Omnibus” bill. All of these bills were included into one bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) as a way to work around Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) who has used “holds” to stop legislation he is opposed to.

Journal Impact Factors

I recently came across this interesting service from Journal Citation Report (JCR) on journal impact factors. According to their website “JCR provides quantitative tools for evaluating journals. The impact factor is one of these; it is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a given period of time.



The impact factor for a journal is calculated based on a three-year period, and can be considered to be the average number of times published papers are cited up to two years after publication. For example, the impact factor 2008 for a journal would be calculated as follows:



A = the number of times articles published in 2006-7 were cited in indexed journals during 2008

B = the number of articles, reviews, proceedings or notes published in 2006-7

impact factor 2008 = A/B”

It will be interesting to see if journals in the field of international education will participate in this.

First Research Study on Outcomes of Study Abroad

During my research efforts I came across what I believe to be the first research study on the outcomes of study abroad.

The article by Roxana Holden was published in The Modern Language Journal in 1934. Holden analyzes statistics and statements from alumni participants of the first ten years of the Junior Year Abroad Programs (which first started at the University of Delaware in 1923). To be sure, there is much literature on U.S. students studying/educated abroad that pre-date this 1934 article. Some of the literature from the 1920’s and 1930’s provides anecdotal evidence of the “value” of study abroad or provides information and quotes of opinion from U.S. based faculty and administrators on the outcomes of study abroad but the Holden article is the first I’ve found that discusses outcomes based on actual data analysis.

The article is available via JSTOR and I’ve provided a citation below:

Holden, Roxana. (1934, November). "Ten Years of Undergraduate Study Abroad". The Modern Language Journal, 19 (2), 117-122.

Director named to the new Center for Capacity Building in Study Abroad

The Center for Capacity Building in Study Abroad is a joint project of NAFSA and NASULGC. Margaret Heisel who is currently the Deputy Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at the University of California has been named the new Director of the Center. According to the NAFSA website, the Center will focus its support of the education abroad field by:

• Building a rich information base to serve institutions wishing to expand their on-campus capacity rapidly, while maintaining quality.


• Identifying opportunities in emerging, potentially high-demand study abroad markets—beyond the traditional destinations—and providing guidance on how to best access those markets responsibly.


• Using innovative action-learning teams, convene groups of institutions experiencing rapid growth to share ideas and information, act as peer support, and foster collaboration.

You can read more about the Center and Dr. Heisel’s bio here: http://www.studyabroadcenter.org/

"CulturedMed"

I posted the following on the NAFSA Intercultural Communication & Training network discussion forum some time ago but think many readers of this Blog might find this of interest too. The website of "CulturedMed" < http://culturedmed.sunyit.edu/> was founded and developed by Jacquelyn Coughlan, Librarian at SUNY Institute of Technology in Utica, New York. I have copied and pasted the very detailed description of the site below:

Purpose of CulturedMed? "CulturedMed" at the Peter J.Cayan Library at SUNYIT is a web site and a resource center of print materials promoting culturally-competent health care for refugees and immigrants. This project provides support to the health care community and newcomers to our country by providing practical information regarding culture and health care from both viewpoints.

What's on this site? The bibliographies and links to relevant online resources found on the web site contain items that discuss health beliefs or ethnographic information about various ethnic groups. All entries are in English. In general, my interest is in the diverse health beliefs of various cultures, and the cross-cultural interactions between health care providers and patients. All of our assumptions are cultural. Since culture impacts everything we think and do, topical bibliographies such as the cultural aspects of food and nutrition, domestic violence and culture, and cultural aspects of death and dying are also included. Bibliographies may also contain items dealing with culture-bound syndromes, medical anthropology, and traditional or folk medicine. More bibliographies will be added as time permits. Currently there are about 9,000 citations. There are 110 other sites that link to us at CulturedMed. If you would like to see a list of who links to us, click here. The three bibliographies that were initially posted to the CulturedMed web site in 1998, were about the first refugee groups to settle in the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York since 1975: the Vietnamese, the Russians, and the Bosnians. The latest arrivals are from African countries that have experienced recent civil unrest such as the Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Somalia. The Utica, New York area is home to 10,000 refugees. Additionally, there are about 5,000 non-English speaking Hispanics, mostly from Puerto Rico.

We are open to the public. Cayan Library at SUNYIT, houses a research center containing relevant print materials and is open to the public. However, not all materials listed on the web bibliographies are owned by the library. We are also certainly happy to share what we do own through the usual interlibrary loan system. See your local academic, medical, or public librarian for assistance.

Who am I? This web site was initiated and is updated periodically by Jacquelyn Coughlan, M.S., M.L.S., at the Cayan Library in Utica, NY. I am deeply committed to cross-cultural understanding between all people and believe this understanding is especially important in the arena of health care. I have co-taught classes in the School of Nursing at SUNYIT about Culturally Competent health care issues. Special thanks for the generous assistance of my colleague Ron Foster, M.L.S. Also many thanks for the hard work of Lisa Sarner, Zoe Sionnach, Jillaine Burnham, Rishi Mehta, Upasana Raina, Charu Swaroop, Danielle Seigers, Adam Clark and Ashley Inglis. Contact Information: Jacquelyn Coughlan Librarian, SUNYIT Cayan Library jackie@sunyit.edu phone: 315-792-7250 fax: 315 792-7517

NAFSA's 2008 Conference Presentations Now Available Online

NAFSA has now made available for download all of the 2008 conference presentaiton materials from pressenters who gave permission. You can acces all of the session materials here: http://www.nafsa.org/annual_conference/ac08schedule/ac08_session_handouts

Students See World During 'Gap Year'

I came across an interesting article and audio (4:40 min.) on NPR on the growth of U.S. high school graduates taking a year off on a 'Gap Year' before starting college. The article correctly identifies that hard data on the numbers of young americans pursuing some sort of "Gap Year'. I'm also witnessing an increased interest in 'Gap Year' activities amoung the students I work with at The University of Chicago. In particular, I talk to a significant number of students who want to pursue an international activity, primarily on a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant, for a year or two after they gradaute from college and before they join the work force or enter gradaute school.

Additional information and articles on "Gap Years" can be found at comunityhigh.org our of Ann Arbor, Michigan at <http://chigh.org/counseling/Resources/gap-year-a-year-on-not-a-year-off>.

NAFSA TLS 2009 Call for Proposals

The Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship knowledge community (TLS-KC) team invites you to submit a proposal for a general conference session, poster presentation, seminar, or workshop for the 2009 NAFSA conference in Los Angeles, CA, on the theme "Fostering Global Engagement through International Education." Proposals are selected by a panel for inclusion in the program based on quality, content, design, balance, and relevance. In this document, you will find guidance on the topics and focus that TLS hopes will be reflected in proposals. Please note that session, seminar, and workshop proposals are due on August 1 and poster proposals are due on November 14.

More Swedish Students Eye Asia for Studying Overseas

An interesting article from China View on the growing interest of Swedish students to study in Asia caught my attention. You can access the brief article here: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/22/content_8416727.htm

Forum on Education Abroad * Call for Proposals

The Fifth Annual Forum on Education Abroad Conference to be held in Portland, Oregon, February 18-20, 2009. The deadline for proposals is August 15, 2008.

The Forum conference theme, “Being There: Teaching and Learning Abroad,” focuses on the unique opportunities and challenges of teaching and learning at education abroad sites. A particular emphasis will be on the dynamics of education abroad student learning and the best practice strategies that assure high quality in education abroad teaching and learning.

More information may be found here: http://www.forumea.org/documents/CallforForumConferenceProposals.pdf

Congressional Caucus on Global Road Safety and ASIRT sponsor "A Crash Course on Study Abroad"

The following is an excerpt from a July 9th Association for Safe International Road Travel press release. You can read the full press release on the ASIRT website at: www.asirt.org.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 9) – On Thursday, July 17, 2008, the Congressional
Caucus on Global Road Safety, co-chaired by Congressman Robert Wexler and
Congressman Chris Van Hollen, in conjunction with the Association for Safe
International Road Travel (ASIRT), will hold a lunch briefing on Capitol Hill on
Road Safety and Study Abroad.

Rochelle Sobel, President of the ASIRT, will frame the discussion in the
context of the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act of 2007,
which passed in the House of Representatives in 2007 and is currently under
consideration in the Senate, and the implications of the increasing numbers of
students traveling abroad.

Carl Herrin, Sr. Partner, of the Global Education Solutions, LLC and Patricia
Martin, Associate Director of Study Aboard in the Office of International
Programs at the University of Pennsylvania and former National Chair of NAFSA
section on Study Abroad, will present their perspectives on the issue as key
representatives of the study abroad community and the NAFSA Health and
Safety Subcommittee.

ASIRT was founded by Rochelle Sobel in 1995 after her son died in bus crash
in Turkey. It is the only U.S.-based international road safety organization
dedicated to improving global road safety and preventing tragedies through
education and advocacy. ASIRT educates travelers about existing conditions
and supports local sustainable road safety partnerships in many countries to
reduce death and injury associated with road travel around the world.

A Growing Number of Journalism Schools Lead Students on Reporting Trips Abroad

In a June/July 2008 web only feature entitled “A growing number of journalism schools lead students on reporting trips abroad” the American Journalism Review discusses the the importance of international reporting trips for journalism students. The article notes that, according to the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, at least 20 of the more than 100 journalism and communications schools offer some type of education opportunities abroad. The July 11th issue of insidehighered.com which highlighted this story states that “as news organizations eliminate foreign correspondent jobs, more journalism schools are adding study abroad programs.”

You can access this AJR article here: http://ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4567

American Students go for Olympic Gold in Learning

I found the following article <http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-07-09-olympic-study-abroad_N.htm> in USA Today on U.S. study abroad programs developed around and focused on various aspects of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to be very interesting.

Working Memory Capacity, Encoding, and Retrieval from Long-Term Memory

In educational psychology you often hear the terms working memory capacity, encoding and retrieval from long-term memory. In this post, I will provide an explanation of each word or term and provide a brief example.

Working memory, according to Ormrod (2006), is a “component of memory that holds and actively thinks about and processes a limited amount of information” (p. 193). Working memory is often referred to as short-term memory. Ormrod elaborates further about working memory by stating that “working memory just doesn’t have room to hold all the information at once – it has a limited capacity” (p. 194). The role of working memory capacity plays in a students’ ability to solve problems is demonstrated in the example of a five year-old pre-school student working to find all of the matching pieces of a matching game. If there are 20 pieces (10 pairs) the child will be more successful in remembering where previously viewed pieces are on the table. If there at 60 pieces (30 pairs) there are too many pieces for the child to process in their working memory and remember their place on the table. The child’s working memory is at its capacity as too many different memory cads have been viewed.

Encoding is simply “changing the format of new information as it is being stored in memory” (Ormrod, 2006, p. 190). I’ll use the five year-old pre-school student again as an example. A classroom of pre-school students is learning about what to do in an emergency; from recognizing emergencies to calling for assistance. A police officer comes to talk to the children and gives each child a short coloring book with pictures following the four steps the children should follow in the event of an emergency. One of the pictures shows fire fighters arriving to the emergency with the traditional Dalmatian (dog) on top of the fire engine. The next day the teacher asks each child to describe what to do in an emergency. One of the children describes one of the four steps to take as needing to call for the fire fighters with the Dalmatian and they insist that the dog must be present to help with the emergency.

Long-term memory retrieval is the process of “remembering previously stored information and “finding” it in memory” (Ormrod, 2006, p. 190). A concrete example of this can be found in the previous example of pre-school students who learned about what to do in an emergency. It has been over one year since one of the pre-school students received instruction about what to do in an emergency. The child’s grandmother is staying the night and watching the child while the parents go out to dinner and attend a concert. During meal time, the grandmother begins to choke on some food and falls to the ground. The child must retrieve from their long-term memory the four steps to take to in an emergency if they are to help their grandmother. The response the child has to the situation (problem-solving) depends on how the child encoded the information they learned about emergencies over a year ago.

Ormrod, J.E. (2006). Educational psychology: Developing learners. (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall.

Where the Hell is Matt?

I recently came across this website of this young American who has several videos of himself dancing around the world. It’s truly amazing where he has been. You can access his site here: http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/


Preview

Weak Dollar Produces Increase in International Student Applications

The weak dollar has produced what an increase in international student applications to U.S. institutions. You can read more about this interesting trend in The Boston Globe here: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/07/05/foreign_students_flock_to_the_us/

Study Abroad Through Second Life

I thought this article and video from the July 2nd Christian Science Monitor to be of interst (http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2008/07/02/study-abroad-through-second-life/) to readers. Something that caught my eye in the article was that the United States Department of State has started using Second Life as a means to introduce others to American culture.

UCEAP Data Collection Efforts on Race and Ethnicity in Education Abroad

During my recent research efforts I came across the statistics website
of the University of California Education Abroad Program (UCEAP)
<http://eap.ucop.edu/staff/statistics/>. I find their statistics
document entitled "UCEAP 5 Year Participation by ethnic Identity" to be
especially interesting as they break down the ethnicity of traditionally underrepresented groups beyond the demographic data we see reported in Open Doors, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and other educational data sets. UCEAP provides both participation numbers and rates for the following ethnic groups:

African-American/Black
American Indian
Chicano/Mexican-American
Chinese/Chinese-American
East Indian/Pakistani
Filipino/Pilipino
Japanese/Japanese-American
Korean/Korean-American
Latin/Other Spanish American
Other Asian/Oriental
Other/Non-White
Pacific Islander/Polynesian
Vietnamese/Vietnamese-American
White/Caucasian
Decline to State

Having such rich data provides UCEAP with an excellent understanding of
their study abroad student profile and serves as an excellent model of
good practice for the field of education abroad.

Your Turn: Faces of a Nation

I found the following Newsweek article from a UC-Davis senior on U.S. students abroad serving as diplomats to improve the image of the U.S. to be of interest.

You can access the article here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/35502

It's nice to see such an article written by an undergradaute student.

Three Reports Released on Global Student Mobility

Three very interesting reports on global student mobility from Australia, Canada and New Zealand were recently released and are available online.

The first report from IDP Education entitled “Global Student Mobility: An Australian Perspective Five Years On” is available at: www.idp.com/pdf/GSM_Brochure_Oct07.pdf

The second report from the Educational Policy Institute (EPI) in Canada entitled “Student Mobility and Credit Transfer: A National and Global Survey” is available at: www.educationalpolicy.org/pub/pubpdf/credit.pdf

The third report from Education Counts in New Zealand entitled “International Student Enrolments in New Zealand 2001-2007: is available at: www.educationcounts.govt.nz